What are the essential elements of Electronic Data Interchange.

The necessary elements of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) are:

• The use of an electronic transmission medium (initially a value-added network, but increasingly the open, public Internet) quite than the dispatch of physical storage media as magnetic disks and tapes;
• The utilization of structured, formatted messages based upon agreed standards (that messages can be interpreted, translated and checked for compliance along with an explicit set of rules);
• Relatively quick delivery of electronic documents from sender to receiver (usually implying receipt in hours or even minutes); and
• Direct communication in between applications (quite than merely in between computers).

EDI depends upon a moderately sophisticated information technology infrastructure. It must comprise data processing, data management and networking abilities, to enable the efficient capture of data in electronic form.